Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Impacts of exposure to UV radiation and an agricultural pollutant on morphology and behaviour of tadpoles (Limnodynastes tasmaniensis)
Published: 2023-10-23
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Amphibians are the most threatened vertebrate class globally, with many species at risk of extinction. Multiple factors have been implicated in the global decline of amphibian populations, and it has been hypothesised that interactions between these stressors may be responsible for such rapid declines. Increased ultraviolet (UV) radiation as a result of ozone depletion has been identified as one [...]
Mobilising central bank digital currency to bend the curve of biodiversity loss
Published: 2023-10-21
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Business, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Humanity is at a critical juncture. Despite our efforts to set targets and goals, biodiversity and climate are both changing rapidly, pushing us towards a biosphere our species has not known. To solve this problem one view is that we need transformational change of the economic paradigm, but that might be more an ideal than pragmatic. A new idea could be to take inspiration from recent [...]
Measuring the 3-30-300 Rule to Help Cities Meet Nature Access Thresholds
Published: 2023-07-02
Subjects: Environmental Public Health, Environmental Studies, Epidemiology, Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The 3-30-300 rule offers benchmarks for cities to promote equitable nature access. It dictates that individuals should see three trees from their dwelling, have 30% tree canopy in their neighborhood, and live within 300 meters of a high-quality green space. Implementing this demands thorough measurement, monitoring, and evaluation methods. Seven data and processes exist to assess these [...]
Adaptive parsimony as an evolutionary solution to the equilibrium selection problem
Published: 2023-06-29
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Many games, especially repeated games, have multiple Nash equilibria, which limits the predictive power of game theory for understanding animal behavior. In this article, I propose a solution to this problem inspired by the notion of stability by convergence from adaptive dynamics. The multiplicity of equilibria is due to the possibility of strategies that are arbitrary in the sense that they are [...]
Light wavelength and pulsing frequency affect avoidance responses of Canada geese
Published: 2023-05-25
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Collisions between birds and aircraft cause bird mortality, economic damage, and aviation safety hazards. One proposed solution to increasing the distance at which birds detect and move away from an approaching aircraft, ultimately mitigating the probability of collision, is through onboard lighting systems. Lights in vehicles have been shown to lead to earlier reactions in some bird species but [...]
Survival of the luckiest
Published: 2023-05-11
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Opposite dynamics are behind natural selection and sexual selection. While the fittest survives in natural selection, the survivor will most likely be the luckiest when both dynamics are combined. As a result, chance has a greater impact on evolution.
Evidence for ancestral olfactory sensitivity but not discrimination across two living elephant species
Published: 2023-04-24
Subjects: Social and Behavioral Sciences
While African savanna and Asian elephants split between 4.2-9 MYA, they are often regarded as one united group, ‘elephants,’ even in the scientific literature. This is concerning, as while both are keystone species in their respective habitats, each face different environmental pressures and have rarely been compared experimentally. Savanna elephants must locate resources that vary spatially and [...]
Nature exposure and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: A Navigation Guide systematic review with meta-analysis
Published: 2023-02-17
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Previous reviews concluded that nature contact was an important coping strategy against poor mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the quality of evidence in these reviews was not sufficiently documented in terms of the risk of bias in reviewed studies. We attempted to fill this gap with a Navigation Guide systematic review and meta-analyses on the associations between nature [...]
Disentangling human nature: Anthropological reflections on evolution, zoonoses and ethnographic investigations
Published: 2023-02-11
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Human nature is a puzzling matter that must be analysed through a holistic lens. In this commentary, I foray into anthropology's biosocial dimensions to underscore that human relations span from microorganisms to global commodities. I argue that the future of social-cultural anthropology depends on the integration of evolutionary theory for its advancement. Ultimately, since the likelihood of [...]
More Than Half of Statistically Significant Research Findings in the Environmental Sciences are Actually Not
Published: 2023-01-25
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Researchers have incentives to search for and selectively report findings that appear to be statistically significant and/or conform to prior beliefs. Such selective reporting practices, including p-hacking and publication bias, can lead to a distorted set of results being published, potentially undermining the process of knowledge accumulation and evidence-based decision making. We take stock of [...]
Social regulation of reproduction: control or signal?
Published: 2023-01-13
Subjects: Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Traditionally, dominant breeders have been considered to be able to control the reproduction of other individuals in multimember groups that have high variance in reproductive success/reproductive skew (e.g., forced sterility/coercion of conspecifics in eusocial animals; sex-change suppression in sequential hermaphrodites). These actions are typically presented as active impositions by [...]
Dominant attitudes and values towards wildlife and the environment in coastal Alabama
Published: 2023-01-03
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Surveys assessing attitudes and values about the environment can help predict human behavior towards wildlife and develop effective conservation goals alongside local communities. Southern Alabama is a hotspot for biodiversity and endemism in the United States and is in need of studies to protect its wildlife. Land and wildlife management practices in Alabama have moved from indigenous-led [...]
Psychological and Cultural Factors Influencing Antibiotic Prescription
Published: 2023-01-02
Subjects: Biology, Economics, Geography, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Psychiatry and Psychology, Psychology, Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Humans have inundated the environment worldwide with antimicrobials for about one century, giving selective advantage to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Therefore, antibiotic resistance has become a public health problem responsible for increased mortality, and extended hospital stays because the efficacy of antibiotics has diminished. Hospitals and other clinical settings have implemented [...]
The Q approach to consensus building: integrating diverse perspectives to guide decision-making
Published: 2022-11-10
Subjects: Communication, Environmental Policy, Environmental Studies, Geography, Models and Methods, Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation, Political Science, Social and Behavioral Sciences
1. Decision-making processes are complex and time-intensive, particularly when a consensus needs to be achieved amongst more than two parties. Discussions and negotiations must consider all relevant stakeholders and their individual perspectives on the decision to be taken. Methods for identifying, understanding, and acknowledging divergent perspectives can support successful consensus building. [...]
The March of the Human Footprint
Published: 2022-09-29
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geography, Human Geography, Life Sciences, Nature and Society Relations, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Human influence is driving planetary change, often in undesirable and unsustainable ways. Recent advances enabled us to measure changes in humanity’s footprint on Earth annually from 2000 – 2019 with a nine-fold improvement in spatial resolution over previous efforts. We found that earlier studies seriously under-estimated the magnitude, extent, and rate of change in the human footprint. [...]